


Let Me Know What Piece I've Lost

by Hyarmaite



Category: Kamen Rider Blade
Genre: Gen, a homecoming of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 10:26:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11461677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyarmaite/pseuds/Hyarmaite
Summary: Title taken from Radical Face's "Welcome Home."Unbeta'd, so I'm sorry for any mistakes.





	Let Me Know What Piece I've Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Radical Face's "Welcome Home."  
> Unbeta'd, so I'm sorry for any mistakes.

Hajime is past hesitation, past exhaustion after nearly ending the world. His limbs are heavy and his eyes threaten to close as he stamps back to the Jacaranda, each step deliberate and thought-out. But he can’t stop now, can’t rest now, not when he has a promise to keep. Not when stopping means thinking, and thinking means remembering, and remembering…

That smile that doesn’t reach the eyes, red blood staining lips and fresh, green dripping down fingers, down the rings he’d worn every day that Hajime had known him for; the sunlight through the trees hitting and reflecting off his new belt, green in the light-

His chest tightens like he can’t breathe, and he shakes the feeling off. No, he has to make it back.

So when he manages to make it through the doorway to the Jacaranda, leaning on the doorframe and panting, he counts it as his first victory in days.

Amane is sitting at the kitchen table, poking at her dinner with little to no enthusiasm, but her head shoots up when she spots him, dressed still in that ridiculous tan coat (it’s just about done for now, full of holes and tears that no amount of sewing can fix).

“Hajime!” she cries, pushing her chair away from the table so quickly that it flips over. “Mom, Hajime’s back!”

“Aikawa?” Haruka sticks her head out of the kitchen, a glass in her hand. “He’s-“

The sight of Hajime stops her dead in her tracks: he knows he’s a mess of cuts and bruises, his face thin and gaunt from no food and no sleep (not that Joker needs it. Not that he needs it), and he realizes for the first time the kind of worry this must cause in others.

Haruka ducks back into the kitchen before she can see Amane nearly tackle him, her small arms wrapping about his waist as she buries her face in his shirt. For a moment she shakes like she’s crying, and Hajime reaches out a tentative hand to lay it on her shoulder.

“Where were you!” Amane shouts. “You were out shopping, and then everything happened so _fast_ , and you weren’t here, and…. And…!”

“The monsters got in the way,” Hajime says, the lie coming easily to his lips. “I got stuck in the woods, and there were too many. I couldn’t get back.” There had been an awful lot of monsters, and he had been stuck in the woods, unable to come home. None of this was technically a lie. He was simply omitting parts and pieces, his own role, the fact that, had Kenzaki been a different type of human, he never would have come home at all-

“How did you get out??” Amane hasn’t let go of him and gives no indication that she’s going to, even as Haruka comes over with the first aid kit to begin patching him up. “Did the Kamen Riders save you?”

Hajime swallows thickly. There was only one Rider, one human, who had saved him, and he didn’t want that name in his mouth right now: the taste was still fresh and bitter. He struggles with his response until Haruka cuts in, coming to his rescue.

“I’m sure Aikawa-san will tell us all about it later,” she says with a knowing smile. “He’s been through a lot, Amane. Give him some time to recover before you go begging for stories.”

Amane looks up at Hajime and, seemingly placated simply by his presence, settles back down. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says, voice cracking, before she recovers and adds, “but I knew you would be! Hajime is strong, right mom?”

“He’s very strong,” Haruka says softly, fingers running over his knuckles as she takes in the damage and begins to clean the scrapes with antiseptic. If she spots the green below the dirt and grime, she doesn’t bring it up.

Hajime remembers, belatedly, that this mother and child have lost someone before, that they have had someone promise he’d be home, probably with gifts, only to never return. _Because of me_ , his thoughts say, but it’s too late to have that sort of regret, certainly, and if he can come home for them…

It strikes him, then, that Kenzaki must have known what him disappearing forever would have done to Amane, who’d already lost a father once, and to Haruka, who was an adult and let on very little, but was clearly devastated by the loss of her husband in her own, quiet way. She had been strong for Amane’s sake this whole time: she didn’t deserve to have to go through that a second time. Kenzaki would have been thinking of that, even at the end. It was just the kind of person he was.

Hajime slowly shifts, bringing up the hand Haruka isn’t treating to pat Amane’s hair.

“I’m home,” he says, for the first time, standing there in the doorway of the Jacaranda with Haruka treating his wounds and Amane clinging to him like he might leave again at any moment. It’s the strangest feeling, and the words are both bitter (because someone else should be saying this, someone who could never come home again), and sweet (because he’d never had a home to come back to, before), all at once, and it’s an overwhelming flood of unfamiliar emotions.

But they’re his, and he’s here, and in this moment he knows he will never be anything other than human.

**Author's Note:**

> Fittingly this drabble is 911 words, just like the number that I need to call after all the damage that this series has inflicted on my soul.


End file.
